kay's week - 3.8.19

As I am changing a few things around for a time on this blog, I'm going to return to some weekly updates on my reading and other life events.  Not sure how long this will suit me, but it will be perfect right now.

Reading this week... 

I finished reading The Eating Instinct by Virginia Sole-Smith and liked it very much.  I didn't agree with all her musings, but I did find the whole book very thought-provoking.  Especially about the issues between each of us and our body size and feelings about food.  The author started the book by telling about Violet, her little girl, who stopped eating due to a medical problem when she was a tiny infant.  She had a heart issue and did have surgery, but required a feeding tube for a long time and had to be retrained to eat anything.  Very traumatic also for her parents and scary.  She interviewed a bunch of people and talked with them about various eating behaviors, etc.  As I noted, I was quite interested in what she shared about our current society's food 'rules' and placing guilt on almost all of us for how we eat.

I also read Deep in the Valley by Robyn Carr, which was a reread for me.  This is the first book in Carr's Grace Valley Trilogy and I'll probably read the other two books as well in upcoming days.  It was written prior to the Virgin River books, but some of the characters have cameos in those as well.  June Hudson is a small town doctor, like her father, and the trilogy is about their town of Grace Valley and June and her friends.  Robyn Carr is on my comfort list of authors.

I listened to David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon on audio for an upcoming book group discussion.  I'm not going to talk about it right now, but will share more after the meeting in a couple of weeks.  The only thing I'll say is that there were three narrators - two were lovely - one was beyond tiresome.  Ha! 

Other Stuff...

Our mystery book group met Wednesday evening and we discussed The Woman In The Window by A.J. Finn (aka Dan Mallory).  I wrote my thoughts on this book last year here.  We talked about the book itself, which most everyone liked or even loved.  I had enjoyed it a lot when I read it.  A couple felt it was a little long and drawn out, but mostly positive responses.  Then we talked about the author and the recent revelations about him and his personality in several articles, primarily one in The New Yorker in February.  Wow.  I won't share much other than to say that it kind of soured all of our feelings about his work.  We did actually talk about whether we could, as readers, separate a 'not very nice' author from their writings - deplore the one and love the other.  Most of us said 'yes'.  There will be a movie in the fall based on The Woman In The Window.  I'll have to consider whether I want to read more of his books when they are published.  Maybe, maybe not.

On the home front, we've had a couple of family gatherings in the last two weeks.  Those are always fun.  We went out with everyone for Mexican food last Saturday and celebrated a family birthday.  Our daughter made some delicious cupcakes to share with all of us - one of them pictured below.  It's red velvet with cream cheese icing.  Yum!  I actually ate and enjoyed most of one and only left a little icing (my tummy doesn't like too much fat in food these days).  It's nice to be able to enjoy some treats without feeling guilty (see why the food book was interesting to me?).
 

That's about it for this week.  Our temperatures have finally warmed up a bit.  As I'm writing this on Thursday afternoon, it's lovely outside and 73 degrees.  It was 25 earlier this week.  Yes, spring comes to Texas!  Bluebonnets have been spotted and I'll maybe have a wildflower picture to share in the next week or two.  Have a good weekend everyone!